We are Small Loan Studio, a collective of volunteer junior game devs and career changers expanding our skillsets! The Ouroboros Express Patch is out on Steam!
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ALT A gold logo with a snake eating its tail around the game title “The Ouroboros Express” Image text reads: “The Production of The Ouroboros Express: A logistical look back.”
ALT Image text reads: “(Tool emoji) 35 Member Team. (two snake emojis)) Roughly 65% worked on both the original game jam & the 2024 patch. (Three earth emojis) 4+ Different Countries across 8+ different Time Zones.”
ALT Image text: “Teams were broken up by discipline, however, our Leads & Producer’s did amazing work to make sure each team communicated with one another effectively, and facilitated a smooth production.”
ALT Image text reads: "We aimed for our volunteer studio to function professionally with structure and regular check-ins on progress. But also with the humanity to work with folks if life happens and they need adjustments to their responsibilities.”
ALT Image text reads: “It was important for us to have a studio environment that respected our volunteers’ time, by having clear expectations and doing our best to not have periods of excessive crunch. This included weekly check-ins, and a two-week sprint structure.”
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Scott Stinson, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads I was brought in to write the ‘main track’ of the game. Andrea (pre-patch audio lead) gave me a lot of context and diverse musical references to wrangle all together…Our main character finds herself in troubling circumstances, but paradoxically, the musical impression of the train was to be eerily soothing…
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Scott Stinson, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. I decided to sample and manipulate some violin lines from the main menu music (performed beautifully by Max Lincoln) and from that, the backbone of the musical track was created. After that, I worked to strike the balance between the near sedative tranquility and unearthly mystery.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Noah Campodonico, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads: One of the first things I worked on when I joined the project was the attraction/decay sounds. Originally, I'd wanted to keep it simple and use a classic bellhop call bell, but after feedback from Naj, I ended up incorporating a gamelan into them as a reference to Vivi's Southeast Asian heritage.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Armoni Boone, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image Text Reads: “Darius’s haunting theme used vocal samples for those eldritch ASMR sounds. Asha’s theme needed to be vibrant, like her, and utilized strings and vocals with little- to-no percussion Susu’s theme benefited the most from Noah’s direction for a summer Ghibli vibe. Instead of solely using a marimba, the score sampled the experimental instrument, Korg’s Phase 8n, for a warm-yet-otherwordly sound.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Noah Campodonico, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads: The horror stingers all use my own voice in some capacity. Whether that's making horrible guttural sounds or just whispering ominously, my own mouth sounds are in there contributing to the atmosphere!
ALT A gold logo with a snake eating its tail around the game title “The Ouroboros Express” Image text reads: “The Music and SFX (Sound Effects) of The Ouroboros Express: An audio look back.”
ALT Image text reads: “Expanded the soundtrack from 4 to 18 songs. 6 crew members. 4 composers. 1 ethereal soundscape.”
ALT Image displays 6 circular portraits of the members of the Ouroboros’ Express Music and Sound team. Image text reads: “Music SFX Crew.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Armoni Boone, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Noah Campodonico, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads: The horror stingers all use my own voice in some capacity. Whether that's making horrible guttural sounds or just whispering ominously, my own mouth sounds are in there contributing to the atmosphere!
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Scott Stinson, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads I was brought in to write the ‘main track’ of the game. Andrea (pre-patch audio lead) gave me a lot of context and diverse musical references to wrangle all together…Our main character finds herself in troubling circumstances, but paradoxically, the musical impression of the train was to be eerily soothing…
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Scott Stinson, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. I decided to sample and manipulate some violin lines from the main menu music (performed beautifully by Max Lincoln) and from that, the backbone of the musical track was created. After that, I worked to strike the balance between the near sedative tranquility and unearthly mystery.
ALT A quote from one of the composers, Noah Campodonico, sits in the center of the post. It details a behind-the-scenes look at the music for the game. Their portrait is on the lower left. Image text reads: One of the first things I worked on when I joined the project was the attraction/decay sounds. Originally, I'd wanted to keep it simple and use a classic bellhop call bell, but after feedback from Naj, I ended up incorporating a gamelan into them as a reference to Vivi's Southeast Asian heritage.
ALT A gold logo for the game “The Ouroborous Express” with a gold snake eating its own tail in a circular shape is surrounded by text. Image Text: The QA of The Ouroboros Express. A quality control look back.
ALT Ten portraits of the Quality Analysis (QA) team sit in front of a graphic of a gold snake that is eating its own tail. The “Ouroboros Express” logo sits in the upper left corner. Image Text: The Ouroboros Express. QA Crew.
ALT A drawing of Bianca, a grey skinned woman wearing blue/grey clothes sitting on a red couch looking bored with her head in her hands. Text reads ‘Nothing to do during the holidays?’
ALT A gold logo for the game “The Ouroborous Express” with a gold snake eating its own tail in a circular shape is surrounded by text. Image Text: The Programming of The Ouroboros Express. An engineering look back.
ALT Image text: 2 programmers. Nearly 5,000 voiceover identifiers. 1 fantastic game.
ALT Image text: “Implementing the voiceover (VO), we had to keep track of almost 5000 different identifiers (one for each dialogue line) that kept changing every time we made a change in the code! This was a big headache but the VO and narrative teams did an excellent job of tracking every change during production and QA spotted and helped us fix all the errors that arose.”
![Image text: “My favorite programming challenge for the patch was scripting the new visual effects like highlighting speaking characters, having animated expressions, and lighting effects in the backgrounds! [T]hey help make the characters and the world...really come alive.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GfVpIevWMAARrRh.jpg?name=orig)
ALT Image text: “My favorite programming challenge for the patch was scripting the new visual effects like highlighting speaking characters, having animated expressions, and lighting effects in the backgrounds! [T]hey help make the characters and the world...really come alive.”